. >>> google's eric schmidd is on his way home from a controversial visit to north korea. we have a live report right after this. this is america. we don't let frequent heartburn come between us and what we love. so if you're one of them people who gets heartburn and then treats day after day... block the acid with prilosec otc and don't get heartburn in the first place! [ male announcer ] one pill each morning. 24 hours. zero heartburn. abecause what you don't know can in tabouhurt you.ce. what if you didn't know that boxes by the curb... make you a target for thieves? or that dog bites account for a third of all home liability claims? what if you didn't know that one in seven drivers is uninsured? and that grease fires have to be smothered? the more you know, the better you can plan for whats ahead. get smarter about your insurance. ♪ we are farmers bum - pa - dum, bum - bum - bum - bum ♪ >>> welcome back, everybody. right now, dow futures run by about 28 points. yesterday, the do i finished up by just over 60 points. >> now today's national weather forecast. reynold

schmidt has not taken publicly about his reasons for the trip to north korea. you will see the equity futures higher and continue to build through the morning. nasdaq is indicated up by about 5 1/2 points and the s&p 500 is up by just over 3. overseas in asia, there was a mixed close. zha shanghai up slightly. and nikkei up by 70 points. in europe at this hour, you will see similar situations to what we've seen here. gains but modest ones. the ftse up by 34 points. in france, the cac is flat lining and in germany dax is up by 7 1/2 point. >> alcoa kicked off a meeting about meeting demand but should they prepare for earnings disappointment, joining us a mana managing director and lee, strategist. before that, we unveal surprises for 2013 and number two, is earnings related? in this case, not that positive about it, right? >> right. >> disappointing. i think earnings for s&p 500 is going to be down this year. >> done year-over-year? >> down year-over-year. >> and below already tempered expectation expectations. >> right. expectations have been coming down. they

. >>> google's executive chairman has arrived in north korea. he wants a first hand look at north korea's social networking. he arrived on a commercial air china flight with former new mexico governor bill richardson who is a friend of "squawk box." dow futures down about 40 points. s&p futures off by about 5.5 points. this is coming after we saw the market close. the s&p up 4.6% for the last week. closed at a new five-year high of 1466 on tri. that is just above september's high. by the way, this is a level we hadn't seen since september 2007. that might explain why you see a slight pullback with some of these numbers today. same situation in europe. if you look, you will see a modest pullback there, as well. the cac in france is down by .6%. overnight in asia, you saw some mixed results. the nikkei in japan was down about 89 points. the shanghai closed slightly higher and the hang seng was virtually flat. if you take a look at oil price these morning, you can see at least right now they're down by about 50 cents. we've been watching the ten ye

it was obama who breaks the logjam on those trade agreement and passes korea, colombia, panama. i think we can go through a list of a bunch of significant pro-growth, pro-business, pro-market things that the administration did that i think will contribute, and i would put patent reform in there and i would put reforming the visa system to reduce where people come in to visit the u.s., that's a big deal. and if we got some more high skill immigration i think that would help. >> so the next four years, the obama administration will not be a hynde rans to private sector growth getting back to 3% or 4%? >> i don't think -- i think -- >> you think -- >> i think it's a help. >> trying to get in to growth rate. >> -- from the financial crisis? >> i think a lot of this. the fact that normally housing is about a third of an expansion, it's a very cyclical sector. we got way overbuilt. we had 6 million vacant homes. so of course nobody's building new houses if there's 6 million empty ones. if that overhang is cut -- >> let's say the president came to you and said i think 25% of government

google's executive chairman, eric schmidt will reportedly travel to north korea this year. the associated press says that schmidt could visit as early as this month. the news comes days after north korean leader jim junk un signaled relatiimproved relatio. >>> brookfield is buying general growth properties. it acquired 18.4 million shares of the developer. brookfield is offering ggp management the rights to acquire those warrants for the same price it paid within 30 deals. as part of the deal, purchasing squares has agreed not to acquire enough to exceed 18%. >>> joining us now, yra harris and wake to both of you. kevin, we'll start with you since you're on set. look at what happened yesterday. big push higher. dow up bier month than 300 points. is this the beginning of more to come in the new year, or is this we're excited that we didn't go over the fiscal cliff, but now we have to reassess where we stand? >> i think it's a latter. what we saw was the removal of some of the tail ricks that markets were concerned about as it related to the potential for a full blown fiscal